Like The Water Finds The Sea
by cousinswar
Summary: TF:PRIME. It only takes six orns for everything to go to the Pit in a handbasket. After an encounter with a roving band of Decepticons, Ratchet faces the toughest years of his life - but Optimus is determined that he will not face them alone.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Like The Water Finds The Sea  
**Rating:** M  
**Universe:** TF:Prime [AU, prewar]  
**Characters:** Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Ironhide, Elita-One, Chromia, Jazz, Ultra Magnus, Prowl, OCs  
**Pairings:** Optimus Prime/Ratchet, mentions of Chromia/Ironhide  
**Content Advisory:** Noncon, offscreen gang rape, mechpreg, rape recovery, discussion of abortion, medical procedures, graphic birth [nonhuman], dubious alien biology

_Please read the warnings above!_ This fic deals with a variety of potentially triggering subjects.

I started posting this on AO3 a couple of months ago under my pen name there, _HurricaneFoundry._ It's become my major project for the foreseeable future - once it's over, I hope to start working on _Book of Hours_ and _Tryphaena. _

* * *

_but you know, like the water finds the sea_

_your soul will always flow right back to me_

_like a river_

* * *

LIKE THE WATER FINDS THE SEA

...

Though he was a thousand leagues away at the Autobot stronghold in Altihex, Optimus knew the moment the mission went bad.

His spark fluttered, the still unfamiliar sensation of a settling bond reaching across the world to him. Unease seeped through, a stark clinging weight settling into his struts. It was faint—had he not been between meetings he likely would not have noticed it.

He set his stylus down beside the datapad he'd been working on, leaning back in his chair and rubbing the tips of his fingers against his aching forehelm. Late afternoon sun streamed down out of a wide unbroken sky, the occasional supply shuttle throwing long, fast-moving shadows across the cityscape. If he ignored the ragged broken spires of the towers brought down in the Seekers' last raid he could almost pretend that Cybertron was at peace today.

From its place on the windowsill, the small purple manybranch crystal Ratchet had given him as a bonding gift refracted spurs of violet light throughout his office. Optimus gave it a pensive look, concentrating on the suddenly wary spin of his own spark. He'd not had long to get used to the sensation of emotions other than his own amongst the morass of thoughts that made his spark spin at the best of times. His emotional protocols _had_ misinterpreted the foreign data before. Perhaps it was nothing to be worried about.

Wind-borne dust, glittering in the sunlight, rustled against the windowpane. His datapad hummed quietly. It could have been idyllic, if not for the disquiet now streaming through the bond.

Optimus frowned down at the desk, only half seeing it. His waking mind reached out, seeking the warmth of his bondmate.

Ratchet would be on his way back from Polyhex – Darkmount, rather, to give the Decepticons' northern power base its full designation – by now. That meant several thousand leagues of distance, stretching the link between them down to almost nothing.

Optimus knew what _nothing_ felt like, however, and this was not it. He traced the unease through his emotional centres and down into the base coding which read his spark. Flickers of his own bewilderment led him astray once or twice; he backtracked through stray files and datapackets until he found the point where the trail picked up, and tried again.

Ratchet had been assigned – in truth, had volunteered himself and browbeaten any of his subordinates in the medical ward who tried to suggest that perhaps someone of lesser rank might be a better choice into submission – to the black ops team charged with the retrieval of a deep cover agent whose story had been blown. Given the Decepticons exceedingly low opinion of such Autobots, expert medical assistance had been one of the points on Jazz' wishlist for the retrieval team, and as Ratchet had successfully argued, the Autobots had no-one more expert than himself.

They'd had their first argument as a bonded couple over it, too.

Optimus drew in a deep breath and vented it, the echoes of Ratchet's strident voice ringing in his audials. He'd known it was a lost cause the moment he'd seen Ratchet's name on the first draft of Jazz' team roster to pass his desk; once Ratchet set his mind to something, the stubbornness of the Unmaker himself was required to overrule him.

Oh, but Optimus had tried! Unfortunately he'd had no argument better than his own misgivings to put forth. Ratchet had been moving in political circles since before Orion Pax had crawled out of the Well, and he'd bent Optimus back over his own side of the debate and tied him to it. Logic and measured reasoning failed to move him; emotive arguments only earned a smile of grim determination and a searing kiss. Ratchet knew him, inside and out.

The bond pulsed, dark clouds skittering across the link. Ratchet was afraid.

_Of what?_ Optimus debated with himself for a moment – should he make contact, and risk possibly breaking Ratchet's concentration? He didn't know what was happening, and there were no words in the bond, Ratchet couldn't tell him. If nothing else, he could offer his support for Ratchet to lean on.

His spark won, reaching through the bond for his mate.

Hesitant reciprocation bled through at his first contact from behind Ratchet's mental shields. Optimus felt his expression grow tight. The mental touch was sharp with nervous energy, the occasion whipcrackle of electricity as Ratchet reacted to something in the outside world. Optimus' own senses fired, the ghost of instinct flashing across the leagues between them. His fingers twitched, closing around the trigger of an imaginary gun.

Ratchet was not a dedicated fighter; he had no ranged weapons, energy-based nor solid-projectile, integrated into his systems. He'd had to borrow a high-powered handheld pistol from Ironhide for this mission.

Gently, Optimus pulsed steady warmth across the distance between them, just enough to say: _I am here._

Then, movement. Ratchet's presence swayed behind his shields, bending before the wind. Optimus felt the faint echo of pain trace through his neural net.

It felt like a fight, but the cloying fear and the anger that simmered beneath the surface made Optimus' spark constrict in a way he'd never experienced before. The bond came alive, Ratchet dropping his mental shields and sweeping through in their wake, his presence suddenly autumn-bright and unmistakeable. Thoughts and impulses streamed between them in a split-second flash, Ratchet's rusty tang sharp on Optimus' senses. In the real world he tasted oxidized iron, pyrites glimmering in the space behind his optics.

He waited, a breath too long, Ratchet's spark thrumming and alive against his own. His hydraulics tensed, lifting him to a half-crouch over his desk. Battle protocols yowled against his conscious mind. He shut down the urge to bring his weapons to bear. Ratchet's crystal glimmered on his desk, darkening as the sun slid down the horizon. Swaying to the left as a sudden surge of instinct hijacked his motor controls, Optimus shut down his optics, and prayed into the darkness.

Helplessness was not an emotion he felt often, but here, with the sickness of sudden terror building up between them, he knew with a horrible clarity that there was nothing he could do to defend his mate.

They waited.

He felt Ratchet's temper boil over, self-preservation protocols the only thing keeping it in check. Anger burned away the fear, but died away in turn. Once the embers had cooled, icy dread crept in. Optimus wrapped his mind around Ratchet's core, pushing every bit of warmth and love and _safety/home/mate_ that he had into the cocoon. Ratchet leaned into him like a starving mech, his spark still shivering, watching for the coming pain.

Dark little thought trees in his subprocessors wondered what was happening. Ratchet's presence flickered, clinging to him and then pulling away. Barriers came flashing down between them, warped and wracked with guilt. Ratchet was trying to protect him, he realised, to spare him from whatever was going on.

Optimus opened his optics, and sunset turned the world a shade of bloodied red. An alarm beeped in the bottom right corner of his HUD; a meeting with Ironhide and Prowl about troop rotations.

He made an executive decision and sent both officers his apologies for backing out.

Optimus shook his helm, and his mind brushed aside the barriers like curtains. Ratchet came edging back to him, his spark cut through with rivers of shame. Hands of quartz and starfire touched Optimus, a ghostly presence wrapping around his waist. Optimus bent to wrap his arms around Ratchet in turn, but a flaw in the precious stones brought him up short. It split open in front of him, Ratchet shattering into a glittering flood of crystal.

Pain hit him like the death of a star.

_—hands, all over him, tipping his helm up, pinning his wrists to the twisted scrap metal above his head, slipping between his thighs and pushing apart with inexorable strength. White, white paint, white optics amongst the red glow of the Decepticons around him, and laughter too, loud and cutting. He squirms, trying in vain to get loose, but pain explodes in his wrists as the biggest of his captors leans on them, crushing his hands into each other. It hurts so much he thinks he might scream if it goes on too long. He grits his dente against the urge and holds out, pleased beyond all logic by the disappointed sigh that pushes itself out of his captor's lips._

_His victory is shortlived. Agony eclipses. The glowing blade of a thermoelectric sword punctures his shoulder, pushing between the outer armor plates, cleaving the joint, buries itself in the ground beneath him. His neural net lights up in a supernova; an insect pinned to a collector's book. His screams fill the air, echoes ringing between the burnt-out buildings._

_He barely feels it as those hands draw upwards, stroking and caressing the exposed joins at the juncture of his thighs in a mockery of tenderness until his overwrought neural net can do nothing but respond. He arches, sobbing as the movement tears the blade through a set of bundled sensor cables deep in his chassis. It's survivable, but it certainly doesn't feel like it, each pulse of damage reports setting his nerve centers on fire, lightning branching through every line in his neural net—_

—a herculean push, and Optimus crashed back into his own body.

The world spun around him for a terrifying moment and settled with him on his back on the floor, staring up at the solar light strips in the ceiling. His limbs trembled, the ghost of a sharp ache cutting through the neural lines in his shoulder. He raised a shaking hand to touch the plating there, reassuring himself that no damage had been done. His fingers tapped lightly against his collar strut – and clarity turned his mind to ice.

On the other side of the bond, Ratchet burned alive.

Optimus threw himself back into the link, wrapping himself around the inferno, choking the flames. His audials buzzed, a strange not-sound that, if he let himself concentrate on it, tore at his spark and stole the breath from his vents, the moisture from his mouth and the strength from his limbs. It was a scream, straight from the deepest parts of Ratchet's mind. Pain and horror and midnight rage coalesced into one sound and sharp-edged with denial crashed into Optimus, rending him to the core. He folded Ratchet into his arms and tried to shield him from the pain, kissing the garnet crown of his mate's helm as ichor dripped from their wounds. Their fluids mingled in rivers, flowing into the space beneath their pedes. Ratchet pressed his face into Optimus' chest and cried out, wordless agony both physical and emotional, and they both felt the invading push of a spike far too large pushing unprepared into his body.

Optimus held him close, rocked him in his embrace as it tore Ratchet apart from the inside out. It was less physical damage than spiritual, but just as agonising. Cracks traced white flaws through Ratchet's quartzite skin as he watched, his mate's lips moving in quiet, hopeless pleas. Optimus read Primus' name on Ratchet's lips and something in his spark broke. He lifted Ratchet higher, holding him up to the glow of the sun and pressing his forehelm to Ratchet's spark, closing his mind's eye against the flow of ichor trickling from between his legs.

Ratchet's arms tightened around his neck, and the pain lessened, leagues opening up between it and them. A quick, haunted kiss pressed to Optimus' helm, and he looked up to meet Ratchet's gaze. Dark trails spilled from his crystalline optics; Optimus didn't have to taste the ashy residue on Ratchet's lips to know it was blood. Ratchet rested their forehelms together, chevron to crest. Optic to optic, abyssal blue met shattered orange. His lips parted. He gave a little, gasping cry. Optimus felt the hot flood of transfluid through the shudders in his field. Trigger nodes dragged trails of lightning through Ratchet's internals as the monster's spike withdrew.

He didn't dare hope it was over. And as Ratchet shook against him, spark eddying with waves of emotion too powerful to measure, he felt the touch of another set of hands against his mate and knew that reprieve would not be theirs for a long time yet.

* * *

The next time he opened his optics, the room was dark. A faint blue glimmer reflected off the corners of his desk, the shape of a mech sitting by his shoulder. Dimmed optics gazed down at him, red plating shifting as the soft click of a comunit activating told Optimus what was going on.

"He's awake, 'Aid," Ironhide murmured into the comunit, resting a hand on Optimus' shoulder when he tried to push himself upright. His bodyguard wrapped a blunt-edged EM field around Optimus as one might do for a frightened newspark, and when he next spoke it was for Optimus' benefit rather than First Aid's. "No, don't get up yet; First Aid an' 'Raj're on the way. Stay down, Optimus."

Optimus had no choice but to obey. As soon as he'd moved, his body made it abundantly clear that he was going nowhere soon. His lines ached, his hydraulics trembling with charge. His limbs shook with the slightest movement. Down in the undercity of Kaon, close to a lifetime ago, he'd once seen a foundry beating the impurities out of an ingot of low-grade iron with a hammer twenty times as big as he was. Perhaps this was how that iron might have felt.

He onlined his vocaliser, and the resultant burst of static made them both wince. Yet the goal was in the forefront of his mind, every subprocessor howling for it.

"Ratchet," he croaked, lifting his optics with great effort to Ironhide's. "Something has happened to him."

Something, yes. He knew the name for it, but the word choked him, hurt to even think it.

Old and canny warrior though he was, Ironhide's expressions made his thoughts as clear as day. "Yeah," he replied after a moment, leaning down and looping one of Optimus' arms around his shoulders. "Ah jus' got the memo – damn' Prowl kept me outta the loop 'til a coupla minutes ago."

A twitch went through Optimus' neural net, the foreign touch triggering still-active self-preservation protocols. Optimus ruthlessly suppressed the immediate reaction, yet enough of the impulse escaped his mental control that he gave a full-framed shudder in Ironhide's arms.

The old warrior gave him a look, worried lines etched into his faceplates. "Let's get yeh up and out of the dark, Optimus. Can yeh stand, d'yeh reckon?"

Optimus leaned back against the side of his desk and buried his helm in his hands, dragging in a deep breath and exventing harshly. His processor was still straining to comprehend the enormity of what he'd felt through Ratchet. He hurt, right down to the core of his spark. He'd had a rare cube of mid-grade that afternoon, and it roiled in his tanks, threatening to make a sudden reappearance. There was a dent in the plating high on his left temple, courtesy of, he suspected, the unforgiving edge of his desk. The beginnings of a migraine needled the overwrought circuits in his core.

On the other side of the bond, Ratchet's presence was still and inert. Offline, perhaps in stasis lock, but not dead or in danger of it. Even in unconsciousness, his spark still echoed with pain.

Optimus reset his vocaliser – once, twice, three times. He bared his dente in what was more a helpless grimace than anything that could be called a smile.

"I… do not know," he managed. "I will try."

"Right. On the count of three." Ironhide crouched, slid his supporting arm down around Optimus' waist and steadied him with the other. On 'three' they rose, an ungainly beast with too many legs. Optimus wobbled on his pedes; Ironhide came close to outmassing him, but Optimus stood head and shoulders taller and had a much higher center of gravity to match. He flung out his free hand and grasped the edge of his desk, easing himself back and bracing against it. His world whirled dizzily in front of him.

Six orns. Optimus tilted his helm upwards, focusing on the ceiling as grief attacked him with tooth and claw. They'd bonded barely six orns ago, and already the world was making a mockery of their vows. His throat cabling worked, trying to swallow down the bitter tang that coated his mouth.

Memories, already distorted, drifted across his mind's eye. The strange buzzing resonated in his audials again. He fought to control himself, dragging his field beneath his armor to stop it from betraying his turmoil, but the damage was already done. He was two size classes larger than Ironhide and could wrestle him to the ground within seconds, but the touch of his bodyguard's servo against his shoulder made him jerk and shy away.

"Optimus?" Ironhide's voice was deliberately slow and calm, echoing in the cool amber touch of his EM field. "Here, look at me for a moment."

Optimus cycled another heavy breath through his vents, and dropped his gaze. Ironhide's optics glowed sluggish blue under their protective filters, optical ridges drawn low in concern. He'd picked Optimus up off the floor after a Matrix-induced vision several times in the past, but Ironhide had been around the block more times than Optimus could count; he'd survived this long by getting very, very good at knowing when something was wrong.

"I saw it," Optimus said, drawing strength from the solid press of Ironhide's field around him. "What happened to him. Felt it. He's alive. Offline, but alive."

Ironhide, Primus bless him, did not question the source of his knowledge. "Location," he prompted. "Surroundings, details. How many attackers?"

"An old church, bombed into ruin." Optimus recounted what little he could remember. Ironhide's internal comms clicked quietly as he relayed the information to whoever was coordinating things in Optimus' absence.

Unannounced, the door slid open. First Aid slipped into the room, a diagnostic kit in his hands.

Optimus felt his cabling draw tight. He forced himself to relax. First Aid was a known quantity, Ratchet's former apprentice. They'd met on several occasions. Optimus had decided then that he rather liked the little sylph's quiet confidence.

"Hey, 'Aid," Ironhide said, sounding far more casual than he looked.

Optimus merely nodded his greeting, not sure he could bring himself to talk without giving away how much he wanted to purge.

First Aid directed him to sit down, this time back in his chair rather than on the floor. Optimus did so without complaint, gratefully taking his weight off shaky legs. The vivid tingle of a full-strength scan washed over his frame.

Ironhide took up his customary position standing at Optimus' right shoulder, a silent bulwark. The frenzied spin of Optimus' spark calmed a little.

He cycled a deep vent through his internal fans, and surrendered himself to First Aid's tender mercies.


	2. Chapter 2

_praying won't change anything_

_what will change the present is_

_how ready you are to fight_

...

LIKE THE WATER FINDS THE SEA

The Altihexian command room was harshly lit and half-empty, late-night shadows creeping in from the corners. For security reasons it occupied the very center of the base. There were no windows and few ventilation shafts, and as the doors flicked shut behind Ironhide, Optimus caught a glimpse of steel blast reinforcing.

Of the twenty-three places at the conference table, only five were filled. Blaster, currently on loan from the Tagan Heights frontlines, balanced his chair back on four legs and murmured a tired greeting. Cuirasse, chief of the Altihexian medical staff, gave a respectful, if distracted, nod. Beside her, First Aid hummed through his dente as he scrolled through a tablet, optics shadowed under drawn browplates. At the back of the room the lean frame of Altihex' resident SpecOps director threatened to merge into the shadows despite his expensive Towers finish. Mirage's yellow optics followed Optimus as he made his way to the head of the table and sat. He felt as though he'd been awake for a million years.

Across the table, Prowl looked up from his mountain of data the moment Optimus sat. His field was taut and frayed, as though he'd been working ten shifts straight. With no Jazz around to haul him bodily out of his office, he probably had.

Holoscreens above the table flickered into life with a wave of the CTO's servo. Ordinarily there would be five, one for each member of the command corps missing. Tonight, there were only three. Elita-One, one of Optimus' oldest remaining friends, smiled down at him from the middle of the group. Her callsign and time zone – Kalis, Western Grid 34.4 – blinked from the bottom of her screen, her assistant's bright red and goldenrod helm hovering behind her shoulders. Accompanying her were two mecha Optimus only knew by their personnel records: Red Alert, newly-promoted General Security Chief, and Kup, whose full title was near-unpronounceable and reflected a military career of nearly a million vorn.

Along with Ratchet, the missing mecha were Jazz – who was leading the rescue effort – and Ultra Magnus, who was busy running the war effort in the Western Hemisphere. Optimus counted both his close friends. Today, he felt their absence keenly.

He vented as unobtrusively as he could, put his servos palms-down on the tabletop and focused on the physical reality of the dead metal beneath his fingertips. Nine pairs of optics settled upon him.

"I believe Prowl has sent each one of you a breakdown of the current situation, but for clarity's sake I will repeat it here," he began. "Earlier today the Darkmount retrieval squad was attacked en route from Polyhex. Details are awaiting confirmation, but it appears that the squad was scattered by a force possibly superior in number, whereupon Ratchet was separated from the main group and subjugated by the enemy."

He paused for a millisecond, wondering how to phrase the rest. Not long – but long enough for Elita to take note, her optics narrowing. "He was tortured for close to a joor, and is currently offline or in stasis. The status of the other squad members is currently unknown."

Ratchet's rank was both a blessing and a curse. As CMO, he was officially considered part of the Autobot command corps. This meant that while he seldom took part in the day-to-day maneuvering and management of the army, for Decepticons – any Decepticons – to target him could never be taken as anything but an active, calculated tactical strike against the Autobots as a whole. Had his security clearance been lower it might have simply been exceedingly bad luck – a symptom of the emotionally-charged violence between the factions. Yet to capture a member of the command corps would give the Decepticons a huge advantage, no matter how they played it. Ratchet, despite his disinterest in military command, held a huge amount of sensitive information within his processors.

And, as Jazz kept reminding everyone, the Decepticons had all the best hackers.

The silver lining in this blackest of thunderclouds was that it gave Optimus all the resources the Torus States branches of the Autobot forces had to throw at Ratchet's recovery. Unlike many other unfortunate mecha in this war, he would not have to fight his own faction to be allowed to go after his mate.

"Recent reports state that the corpse of the squad captain, one Cutlass, has been found alongside several Decepticon frames, all either dead or approaching it." Prowl cut in smoothly. A databurst pinged politely in Optimus' inbox. He opened it, scrolling through the document as the tactician continued. "Trackers have reached the squad's last known location and are following several trails."

An undertone of static bled through one of the communicators. Red Alert was muttering softly. He made no move to speak aloud, however. Prowl pinged the holoprojector, and the crackling quieted.

"What are our sources?" Kup prompted through the cygar hanging from the corner of his mouth. "First response?"

"We lost radio contact with the squad prior to their arrival in Polyhexi territory," Blaster put in. The Altihexi base was the closest communications hub to Darkmount; Blaster, a gifted broadcast tech, had been transferred to monitor Decepticon communications rather than keep track of their own operatives. He was a young mech, plainly out of his comfort zone in such high-level discussions. His field slunk closer to his plating as he continued. "We weren't going to be able to get away with it within Darkmount's zone. The plan was to check in with ground control when they crossed the border into Uraya afterwards. This would've been about half a joor ago. When they didn't check in, we sent SpecOps a warning and went to the extended time. "

Mirage shifted, crossing one leg over the other and leaning his helm back against the wall. "Special Operations then readied a second team, primarily composed of trackers and combat specialists, to render assistance if needed while the extended rendezvous window elapsed, after which point they were deployed. Jazz is commanding this team, hence my presence here."

"Mirage and I have direct, heavily encrypted comm lines open to Jazz," Prowl said, and another databurst made the rounds. "The majority of our information is being relayed through him; however," and here he glanced at Optimus for the barest moment, "Optimus has given us some information, the accuracy of which has yet to be proven."

Five curious glances came Optimus' way. "What d'ya mean, 'yet to be proven?'" Kup asked.

"It is not overly detailed, and I do not know whether the method of transmission may have affected its veracity," Optimus explained, his spark lead-weighted. He'd given Prowl everything he could, but the split-second glimpse he'd seen through Ratchet's optics had been blurry with pain. He hadn't even known it was possible to share a bondmate's senses.

"Oh?" Elita said, leaning closer to the screen. "Has the Matrix begun concerning itself with present matters?"

Cuirasse consulted her tablet. "According to the scans 'Aid took, there's none of the electrical activity here that had been present after your other visions. Admittedly Ratchet's the only one with the full record, but I've got a decent sample here."

Optimus shook his helm, forestalling the queries he could feel coming. "It was not the Matrix," he said, quickly and firmly. He could not afford to be tentative with this. "Six orns ago, Ratchet and I bonded. I felt a small measure of the assault through it."

There was a wordless outcry as several of the others tried to speak up at once. Optimus raised his hands, palms outward, pressed intent through his field and brought it down on Prowl and Cuirasse when it looked like they might argue. "I am not interested in listening to criticism at this juncture! You may critique our decision as much as you like when Ratchet has been brought back to safety."

"Ah take it that's how yeh know he's alive," Ironhide said. He was frowning, but not, if Optimus knew his bodyguard at all, in disapproval.

Optimus nodded shortly. "I don't believe he's immediately in danger of fading, either. His recovery must be our immediate priority."

"Doubly so, now." Elita tapped her claws against her desk – the tinny sound echoed through the link, sharp, staccato. "Optimus, my friend, I question your wisdom in bonding but I cannot deny that in this situation it may be to our advantage. I pray to the Star of Chaos that it continues to be so."

"Ratchet's security clearance is second-tier," Red Alert rasped. "He should have the appropriate firewalls, but if he is taken to Darkmount they will not hold forever."

"That is our worst-case scenario," Prowl agreed, his voice clipped. "Kimia reports that Darkmount is in lockdown. Ships have not been allowed to take off nor land since the dawn shift this morning, when our jailbreak was discovered. This would indicate that Ratchet has not yet been taken prisoner."

Blaster frowned. "Why wouldn't they, though? If I was a 'Con and I had a high-ranking Autobot at my mercy, the obvious thing to do would be to take them in to my superiors."

Optimus held his field as still as he could muster, counting slowly to six. Blaster met his optics for a moment, then winced, field furling in apology. It wasn't his fault – Optimus sent him an apologetic ping, though the wound in his spark was still raw and bleeding.

"It may be that they don't know what he looks like, though." Elita shifted to the side, allowing her assistant to speak up. Hot Rod squeezed into the holoscreen's frame, the flared tip of his spoiler sticking up behind Elita's shoulder.

Hot Rod was young, an orphan of the war in Kalis. Elita had adopted him shortly after her own mate's death in the fall of the Towers in Protihex. Roddy had been a sparkling, barely a couple of orns old at the time. Optimus had once asked why. He'd received as a reply a video-capture of a tiny red-and-gold mechlet crawling through the muddied streets of the bombed-out city, chuckling at the motes of golden dust that danced through the sunlit atmosphere and died as they settled on the damp silt drifts in front of him.

"He broke my spark, Optimus," Elita had said, cradling the dusty, gurgling child in her arms. "Anyone who can laugh in such a terrible place deserves the chance to survive."

In the here and now, Hot Rod continued. "I mean, I hear about people like Soundwave and Starscream all the time – but I only just found out what Starscream looks like in person last night. If these guys are scouts, say, they'll know the _name_ Ratchet, but who knows whether they'll recognise the face that goes with it?"

"Plausible, but unlikely," Prowl judged, optics narrowing in thought. "It would be the best-case scenario."

"It may explain certain things," Optimus mused. He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on his hands, staring down at the tabletop without really seeing it. His tanks roiled as he tried to recall the few small details he'd gathered in the midst of Ratchet's pain. "They stayed in the same place for rather a long time."

"Undoubtedly somewhere they felt safe. There are three major battlefields close to where the team was scattered." Prowl grabbed for another datapad and jabbed the stylus into the screen so hard Optimus half-expected it to crack. "Caulter Plateaux and Mollyn Stay – both were Decepticon victories. There is an outpost near Caulter Plateaux, so likely not there; they would have taken him to the outpost if they'd had a half a brain module between them. Mollyn Stay township was bombed… and there was a small church within the city limits."

Prowl's commlink interrupted him. His optics dimmed, stared into the middle distance. Optimus recognised the look of a mech paying every iota of his attention.

Mirage detached himself from the shadows. "It seems Prowl was right," he said. "They've just found Ratchet inside the Mollyn Stay transept. Jazz refuses to give me details, but he is as angry as I've ever heard him." He slipped out the door and vanished from sight.

"Prepare yourself, Optimus," Prowl put in, clicking off his tablet. "It's bad."

* * *

They brought Ratchet in unconscious, keeping him in stasis lock until his wounds could be treated. Optimus might have protested, but the moment he laid optics on his bondmate's ravaged frame he understood.

The Altihex base's medical wing had once been a teaching facility attached to the Altihex Academy of Medical Engineering. There was an observation bay set into the wall of the main operating theatre, where tutors had once watched their students operate on dummy frames. Optimus waited there, hands pressed to the glass, vents coming quick and shallow in anxiety.

Under the surgeons' skilled hands, Ratchet slowly became recognisable again.

There was so very much to repair. The nurses under First Aid's command had cleaned Ratchet up as best they could prior to the operation: his mouth no longer glistened with silver, the streaks of dried fluid that had painted his thighs and abdomen vanishing under solvent and cloth. The patina of dust and debris that had turned the white of his paintjob dirty brown washed away under a steady spray of low-pH cleanser.

Ratchet's entire left shoulder was a ruin of sparking wires and twisted, blackened metal. The edges of the surrounding plating drooped and bubbled, droplets of melted metal visible amongst the dead protomass and char inside the wound. Thermoelectric blades always left ugly scars. The joint had been completely obliterated. The ends of Ratchet's clavicular and upper biceptic struts had simply... liquefied under the heat of the blade. It was a dreadful injury. As Optimus watched, the surgeons stripped Ratchet's shoulder back almost as far as his processor core, removing both arm and shoulder mechanisms. The detached arm was set down on a separate operating surface, where another surgeon carefully sealed the open lines and deactivated all electrical systems, before placing the limb into a suspension bath. The container was then sealed, and placed into cold storage.

They'd largely left his valve alone. Whether that was an indication that the damage was not as bad as he'd feared, or otherwise, Optimus could not begin to guess. Someone had found a cloth to spread across his pelvic span; they'd soaked that in a nanite solution and left it there while the surgeons worked on his shoulder. Small mercies, Optimus was grateful for them.

The rest of the damage was comparatively superficial. Optimus followed the medics intently as plating was welded and coaxed back into shape, stripped gears replaced and cabling patched. By the time the buzz of activity began to die down, Ratchet's frame was much diminished. A temporary patch covered the stump of his shoulder, and what remained of his plating was striped with welds and green smears of nanite paint.

There was a knock on the door of the observation booth. Optimus came very close to jumping out of his own plating.

"Enter," he called, venting in. He counted to six as the mech – Cuirasse – closed the door behind herself, then let it go. It didn't seem to help.

"Are you holding up all right?" she asked, in the silence left by the echoing click of the lock. Her field was held tight against her plating; it prickled to the touch, shot through with a bitter note something like helpless anger to the taste. Her optics blazed yellow out of a taut mask of neutrality.

_No._ "Yes, I am," Optimus said, the lie – for once – slipping smoothly onto his glossa. "Are you?"

Cuirasse's optics refocused, her mask slipping. "Yeah," she said, shifting a look down and to the side. "Just… tired. Tired, and Unicron-spittin' angry. I'm not here for me, though."

"I had thought so." Optimus replied. There was a chair in the corner of the room – not big enough to be comfortable for a mech his size, but perhaps enough to support a weary medic. He stepped back, caught it by the armrests and brought it forward, wordlessly offering. Caught off-guard for the second time in as many minutes, Cuirasse gaped at it. Her control shattered, reformed into a mirthless grin.

"Sure I can? I don't want to be rude." She waved a still-damp servo at him, the gesture taking in his entirety:_ It's not done to sit down in the presence of a Prime._

"You will not be rude," Optimus persisted. To the Pit with formality. "I owe you and everyone else who has assisted my immense gratitude."

"You don't owe me a thing," Cuirasse argued, even as her knees folded beneath her. She didn't so much sit down as collapse into the padded chair, the bearings in her tyres squeaking as her heels rubbed against the floor. "I'd have done the same for anyone. We all would have. The 'Cons chewed him up and put him through the Smelter, and the Pillars spat him back out."

Optimus shook his helm, glancing back out into the theater. Ratchet lay on the berth, supine, his optics shuttered and his one remaining arm crossed over his chest. There was a strangely peaceful expression on his face, utterly at odds with the injuries marring his frame.

_I was afraid of that,_ he very nearly said aloud.

"You're down as Ratchet's next of kin in his documentation. This is the post-operation report." Cuirasse's scowl faded into an exhausted frown. "The damage looks a lot worse than it is, fortunately. Worst is his shoulder; the joint was completely destroyed and enough of the surrounding mechanisms went with it that it's more efficient to replace the entire shoulder. We're going to have to machine a new joint custom to his specifications, however, which will take longer than I'd like. The heat killed off a great deal of his protomass in that area, which has had to be excised. He will need to undergo several more surgeries at some point; we will fortunately be able to reattach his arm once the joint is fitted, but between then and now his protomass has to recover enough to firstly allow the new joint to integrate into his frame, and then to reintegrate the arm itself. Assuming all goes as planned, it might be as much as a full chord before he's fully functional again."

Optimus tasted half-processed energon in the back of his mouth. He swallowed it down, trying to keep the motion as inconspicuous as possible. "I see. The other damage will not pose as significant a setback?"

"The physical damage, I shouldn't think so." Cuirasse looked away, bitterness flooding her field. "There's… Prime, you have to understand that with this sort of attack, it's not the physical wounds that do the most damage. And there are as many ways that people react as there are mecha on this planet. We can look at the physical damage and make an educated guess, but that's as good as you're going to get. According to Jazz they had him pinned to the ground with a scrap-fragging thermoelectric sword through his shoulder. He was being electrocuted, burned and gang-raped at the same damn time. That sort of thing doesn't just leave a mark on your consciousness, it carves it in ten leagues deep with a rusty bandsaw."

There was a rail running along beneath the window behind him. Optimus knelt, groping for it as the weight in his spark drove him to the floor. He felt his digits creak, their cabling threatening to snap with the pressure of his own grip. The pain broke through the howling in his mind, grounded him before it consumed him._ I should have been there. I swore to protect him, to guard him, to keep him safe. I should have been there._

Cuirasse was watching him, her optics tired and knowing. Optimus picked up the frayed pieces of his composure, but they slipped through his mental fingers like water.

He gave up. Looked at his hands, curled them into fists and pressed hard against his thighs. "What can I do to help him?"

"You can talk to him, for starters. He'll be awake soon. It might help if you were there."

All the Decepticons in the world could not have stopped him. "I will."

There was a silence. Cuirasse broke it with an awkward cough of her vents. "Sorry if I stepped over the line a bit there, Prime. It's just something you've got to understand."

Optimus let out a vent he'd forgotten he'd been holding. "No, the advice is appreciated. I… will likely have need of it in the very near future."

"Definitely," the medic murmured. "Anyway, as I said, the shoulder's the worst. We've got some anomalies in his spark readings that we're about to get looked at in greater depth, but his output rate is stable and his pulse is fine and strong. His plating was severely damaged in places, which is to be expected with violent assault. The worst have been removed as repair would be exceedingly fiddly otherwise. He's sustained minor motor system damage to most joints; and the hydraulics in his back, hips and knees are severely overstressed and may require replacement rather than repair. He's low on energon and derivatives, so we've hooked him up to a direct drip-feed which will remain in place overnight. Longer, depending on how well he can take it orally tomorrow."

"How long do you expect him to remain in medbay?" Ratchet's own quarters weren't far from here. Optimus hoped that would count in his favour. He'd never liked to be kept in his own hospital.

"Perhaps three or four shifts, at the least. Long enough to integrate his initial repairs. Longer, likely." Cuirasse drummed her fingers against the arm of the chair, her optics focusing on a spot on the wall past Optimus' shoulder. "His internal damage is not worrying, by itself. The valve lining is severely abraded and has prolapsed somewhat, but we've pinned it back in place and applied nanite gel. Self-repair should have it fixed within a couple of orns. The sensory network came close to burning out – again, self-repair will do more for that than we could. Physically, he doesn't need a replacement. Psychologically, it could help. I'll leave that to Ratchet himself, however. Rung too."

Optimus shifted his weight off his heels, which were beginning to ache. "Who is Rung? I am unfamiliar with the name."

"Part of the local psych team. I've worked with him before and I'll vouch for his competency 'til the sun turns blue. Regulations require thirty joors counselling after trauma – torture, captivity for example – so I'm recommending they assign Ratchet to him."

She opened her mouth, as if to continue, but the chirp of a comm interrupted her. Her optics dimmed, the sharp yellow glare turning distant. An update, Optimus assumed. He glanced out the window again. The nurses were cleaning the theater, and Ratchet was gone.

Cuirasse spoke again, catching Optimus by surprise. "You and Ratchet are bonded – you were sexually active, I assume?"

Optimus blinked at the sudden change of topic. Cuirasse's field drew back in wordless submission, but she did not retract the question.

"Yes?" he said eventually, the question markers creeping through his mental censorship. "We were, yes."

The grimace deepened. "We have the preliminary results from Ratchet's spark scan back. We're taking him for a deeper systems scan now. I've been asked to bring you to the tech ward."

Worry gripped Optimus' processor with sharp-clawed fists. "Is there a problem with his spark?"

"Not as such. I don't want to make a diagnosis on preliminary results alone, hence the deep scan." She pushed herself to her pedes, her frame creaking alarmingly.

Optimus held the door open for her. She left, transforming as she went.


	3. Chapter 3

_the clock is running backwards, the roof is caving in  
i can't see where i'm going, and i can't go where i've been_

...

LIKE THE WATER FINDS THE SEA

Ironhide joined them out in the hallway, falling neatly into step at Optimus' heels. Outwardly he was silent, but his sharp-edged warrior's field crackled with a painful mix of worry and rage.

/_ Ah saw Ratch go past _/ he sent over their private comm line, glyphs edged in hot jitters of temper. /_ Saw what they did to him. Ah haven't smelled that much nangel since Palisade got his stupid aft blown open at Polyhex._ /

Optimus shook his helm, trying to find the words to reply. He hadn't told Ironhide the full details of what had happened to Ratchet – but given the old warrior's breadth of experience, it was entirely possible that he'd guessed on his own. Likely, in fact, looking at the way his mouth twitched as if he wanted to sneer. Ironhide's optics flashed with a malevolence Optimus hadn't known he possessed.

How much did he know? Optimus didn't think he had the mental fortitude to ask.

Cuirasse came to a halt outside an unmarked door, unfolding from her altmode. She plucked a tablet from subspace, waving it in front the scanner set beside the doorframe. Lights blinked from red to blue, and the door slid open with a quiet hiss of pressurized atmosphere.

"Delicate instruments in here," she said absently, waving Optimus through. Ironhide recieved a dubious squint, but was allowed to enter with no outward comment. 

It was quiet inside the lab, the hum and tick of machinery the only sounds. Dark, too, the only light coming from the monitors glowing on every wall, a bank of strip lights at the far end of the room. Two med techs huddled over a bench underneath, one intently studying the readouts on an active screen in front of her while the other peered through a window into the room beyond.

"Down there." Cuirasse nodded at the techs. "Caduceus on the left, Readout at the window. We're running a full-spectrum scan at the moment. It's dependent on the results, of course, but I don't believe we'll need any more than that."

The mech at the window glanced over his shoulder, optics widening minutely as he caught sight of Optimus. He hadn't been resident at the Altihexi base long enough for most mecha to become used to his presence – although, Optimus supposed, with the amount of fantastical stories the rank and file told about him, he shouldn't expect to ever be regarded as just another one of the commanders.

"Percentage complete?" Cuirasse asked as they reached the observation bench. Readout focused gratefully on her, through flickers of apprehension still branched through his EM field.

"Seventy-eight, eighty percent. We estimate another couple of minutes until completion."

"Which is fortunate, since the stasis coding is starting to wear off," Caduceus put in, shuffling over so that Optimus could look through the window. "His helm and chassis are braced, but there are no limb restraints on the tray. I don't think he'd have appreciated them, anyway."

Through the glass, Optimus caught sight of his mate, halfway obscured within the barrel of a massive full-frame scanner. He half-heard the medics launching into a detailed conversation behind him, and part of his mind told him that he really ought to listen just in case they were saying something important. He was no medic, though, and it quickly proved beyond his abilities.

His spark leapt and twisted uncomfortably as Ratchet's one remaining hand twitched. The bond pulsed faintly, the touch of Ratchet's mind no longer seeming quite so far away.

He reached out through it, slowly, hesitantly: _I am here, waiting for you._

As yet, there was no answer.

"Optimus?" Ironhide's voice brought him up short. He turned, and was greeted with four pairs of expectant optics, Ironhide's hovering head and shoulders above the medics'.

"Yes?" There was the nagging sense that his voice was beginning to break again, but Ratchet was _right there_, so close, and he couldn't bring himself to care about anything beyond that. "Did you need something?"

Looking rather taken aback, Cuirasse replied. "Yes, in fact. We need to know if there was anything… unusual about the manner in which he went offline. Anything you can tell us that may help us understand why we're getting the readings we are."

Her expression was flat, her field leaden. Optimus scanned the two med techs. Neither gave him any better clue.

He called up the few intact memory files he had of the rape, closing his optics and locking his dente against the flood of nausea they brought back. He didn't want to purge, he _would not purge;_ now more than ever he needed the stoic mask of the Prime to keep himself functioning and _useful_—

—_glowing magma under his fingertips, floating islands of crystal drifting across the viscous surface. His arms burned where they touched Ratchet, water hissing and boiling off into clouds of hellish steam, but he offered himself without care for his own pain, anything to ease the attack ripping his mate open from within—_

He shook his helm, delving deeper. His forearms prickled, sensor grid alight with imagined sensation.

_—gentle kisses, harsh bursts of exvents under a darkened sky. Exhaustion wore the energy from Ratchet's resistance, sapped the bright orange colour from his quartz. Optimus was all that was keeping him upright. When would they finally stop? How much longer would he suffer?— Optimus snapped the bud from the thought; he could not let himself give in to his own anger, not at any cost. _

In the real world, he looked back through the glass, his attention resting for the moment upon Ratchet's prone body. There was no more anger, not for the moment. Only a spark-deep exhaustion, glittering shards of ice digging deep into the crevasses of his mind.

"It wasn't anything they did," he said, suddenly sure of the answer. "Well – to be more accurate, it must have been related—" to the rape, but the words shrivelled on his glossa as he said them— "but it was not intentional. I know that it hurt; I felt it as well, to an extent."

The two med techs shared an unreadable look.

"Can you describe it?" asked Cuirasse, who apparently had more self-control. "I am sorry for asking – I understand that this is a deeply personal matter, but we have so few records of this particular diagnosis that we need every little symptom to be anything close to sure."

"What do you mean?" Optimus gripped the edge of the bench, hard enough to leave black paint scrapes in the metal. "I don't know that I can describe it in any detail, but it felt like breaking, like dying. The closest comparison I know of is the time I spent integrating the Matrix, but I have no words to describe that either. I'm sorry."

It wasn't the medics he was apologising to.

Movement caught his optic – the scanner's light switching off, the tray sliding out of the barrel. Ratchet's helm slumped to the side, catching against the brace. There was a faint flicker of consciousness through the bond, and Optimus reacted in a nanoklik, wrapping all the love and support he had to offer around the growing spark.

There was something odd beneath Ratchet's presence, a barely-seen glimmer of frost. Like black ice on Iacon's roads, Optimus had to look hard to spot it. He sent a tendril of curiosity to investigate, but the ice had vanished by the time it got there.

"Like fragmenting, perhaps?" Cuirasse suggested, as Readout and Caduceus vanished into the scanner room. She followed Optimus' line of sight, and gave a twisted smile. "He should be coming back online now; you ought to be able to feel it. He may feel a little strange at first. I obviously don't know what forms your bond takes, but whatever you've gotten used to, he won't be the same."

She took a slow inward vent, and added, "He's carrying a newspark."

Ice crashed through Optimus' processor, numbing time to a crawl.

He locked his joints and disabled his motor relays, offlining his vocaliser while he wrestled himself back under control. Cuirasse took a step backwards, swaying under the weight of Optimus' field. Ironhide remained where he was, but his optics were wide and his stance stiff and unnatural. Optimus clawed back as much of his field as he could, but his control had been shattered and stray wisps lashed around him, sharp with denial.

"Was he…?" He couldn't force out the rest of the sentence, the idea that the Decepticons might have raped Ratchet's very spark too sickening to bear. Surely they couldn't have. Wouldn't he have felt it? He'd held Ratchet through it, taken his mate within himself and guarded him in what little ways he could. They'd been separated by a thousand leagues, the curve of the planet itself. _Primus below_, it was all he could have done.

Cuirasse shook her head – it would not have been very hard to guess at the words omitted.

"We don't believe so. There was no suggestion of his core locks having been either hacked or physically forced; whether the attempt was successful or not it would have left unmistakeable marks on his core armour. However, the spark readings we're getting indicate the presence of a very young newspark orbiting his own – less than two orns old, certainly, more than likely less than one. Additionally, the electrical activity within his generation systems is averaging far higher than normal, and his spark itself is giving off readings which only make sense in terms of conception-period averages." She brought out a datapad, passing it to Optimus. "This is the baseline pulse of his spark – the top graph shows a ten-second cycle at rest, and the bottom is the same ten-second cycle under stress. These were taken two vorn ago at his most recent full checkup."

The screen went blank for a nanoklik, the network icon at the bottom of the interface blinking. A new graph replaced the first two; Optimus recognised the pattern of the increased-stress readout, but—

Cuirasse reached up, tapped the wildly-spiking spark signature completely alien to Ratchet's own. "This is the newspark. It's still gathering the plasmatic material it needs to fully ignite, hence the erratic pulse and heightened activity. This is not unexpected on its own; most newsparks go through a similar period. Twenty-five percent of all kindlesparks gutter during this period, most through lack of energy, which is why it's recommended to merge often and regularly when attempting to kindle. I would say that this one has a fairly good chance of survival no matter what you do, despite the manner of its creation."

"What do you mean?" Optimus said, his own voice echoing distantly within his audials. He felt hollow, as though hands had reached beneath the plates of his chassis and plucked out most of his internal components. He tracked the rhythmic rise and fall of Ratchet's pulse on the datapad screen, the newspark pulsing just out of step with Ratchet's.

Cuirasse answered with a question of her own. "How much do you know about budding?"

Optimus met her gaze in surprise. "Very little." The dots connected in his processor, and at long last a small thread of relief wended through the depths of his spark. "Do you think that it was budded?"

"Sparks under intense stress tend to split," Cuirasse sighed. "We've known this for a long time, and the prevalence of hot-spectralisation – that is, sparks which destabilise and burn hotter than their natural spectra as a result – among victims of extended torture confirm that this is not necessarily a death sentence. There have been theories floating around for almost as long that perhaps if the parent spark is strong enough or the fractured material gathers in large enough amounts – well, it's essentially the same process as an intended budding."

She drew in a nervous vent. "I think that that thermoelectric sword was pumping more energy than he could cope with into his systems for close on half a joor. The rape – and, forgive me for saying this – the newness of your bond, the frequent interfaces that confirming a new bond requires, all of that primed his gestational systems for carrying. When his spark fractured under the stress, his generational protocols interpreted that fracture as part of the overlying pattern rather than a coincidental attack, and wove the released plasma into a newspark."

Optimus nodded, slowly, silently. "Then… had we not bonded, he may not have been in this position right now."

Cuirasse frowned, opened her mouth to speak – but, unexpectedly, Ironhide interrupted.

"It ain't yer fault, Optimus – don't go thinking that for a second. Yeh did the best yet could. I heard yeh argued with Ratchet, tried to talk him out of going. Yeh aren't responsible for this, any more than he is."

Optimus straightened under his bodyguard's reproving gaze. "I am aware of that," he said, aware of Cuirasse stepping backward on the edge of his visual field, "and I don't intend to place the blame for this anywhere but on the heads of those who committed this crime. I am simply facing the consequences of my actions—"

For the first time in all the vorns of their acquaintance, Ironhide interrupted him. "Really? 'Cause it sounds to me like yer beatin' yerself up. Feels it, too." He pushed his field against Optimus', hard and mirror-like. The strength of the self-loathing reflected in it threw Optimus well off-balance. "Bonding's s'posed to be the best thing for both of yeh. If yeh let yerself regret it, yeh'll be miserable for the rest of yer lives. And besides which, what's Ratchet supposed to think? No matter how well—thought-out yeh think yer reasoning is, yeh know rationalism ain't exactly his first instinct."

The light in his optics was old, knowing. Optimus' anger subsided before he'd even realised it was there.

"Thank you," he said, suddenly feeling tired beyond all reasonable explanation. He reached out through the bond, automatically seeking the comfort of Ratchet's presence.

"Ain't a problem, Optimus." Ironhide gave another push of his field, this one blunt and warm, offering friendship. "Ah've been bonded twice; Ah know how these things work. Pretty sure Ah'm right in thinkin' Ratchet ain't the only one who needs a friend right now."

From the scanner room's door, Cuirasse made an unobtrusive noise. Optimus looked up. Movement caught his optic, the slow, groggy movements of a mech fighting off the last of a stasis sequence.

The medic smiled, and said, "He's waking up."

Soft, sleepy thoughts enfolded him – thoughts not his own. Ratchet's presence was tired, but strong. Optimus' threw himself into the bond, barely conscious of hurrying into the scanning room.

The two med techs had shifted Ratchet from the tray of the scanner onto a wheeled berth, laying him on his side while they arranged a soft mesh pad beneath what was left of his shoulder. The drip had been hooked up to the corner of the berth, a thin line disappearing beneath the armor low on his side.

Optimus was beside the berth in two long strides. Ratchet's field brushed softly over Optimus' frame. His optics cracked open. He focused blearily, attempting to turn his helm. Optimus swept around the berth, knelt by the pillow and took Ratchet's remaining hand in his.

Ratchet smiled, gently squeezing Optimus' servo. It took a few tries before he was able to speak audibly, and when he did it was in whispered Protihexi – his native language. "Hello, Optimus."

"Welcome," Optimus replied in the same language, unable to stop the answering smile even if he'd wanted to. "I am so glad to have you back."

"'know that already," Ratchet said, blinking. "Can feel it." His field furled away, and came back a little stronger. "I hurt. All over. Did I… was I hurt?"

Optimus stilled, the smile freezing on his lips. "Do you not remember?"

Ratchet gave his best approximation of his usual suspicious frown. "Remember what?"

A moment, cold and fearful. Optimus switched back to traders' Iaconian. "He doesn't remember," he reported to the medics, new worry gnawing at his spark chamber. "He asked me how he was hurt."

Ratchet frowned, letting go of his hand. "'M still here," he mumbled, still in Protihexi. "Can still understand you."

Cuirasse pursed her lips. "It's not unheard of. Not all danger is physical, and medics have very well-developed self-preservation protocols."

As she spoke, the med techs carefully rolled Ratchet onto his back, positioning the bracing cushion underneath the stump of his shoulder. Ratchet's helm flopped back onto his pillow, his optics opening wide and focusing on his missing arm. He frowned. His hand came up to cup the patch the medics had welded over the bare protomass to protect it. He swallowed, and made a small noise of pain.

"Ratchet," Optimus said, not liking the sudden distant note in his field, "are you hurting? Can you look at me?"

"I," Ratchet began, and his optics drifted closed, his faceplates tensing, "can't. Don't want to." His fingers curled closed, scraping against the welds on the patch. He sucked in a quick breath, his internal fans rattling. Optimus reached out, resting his servo on Ratchet's forearm.

Ratchet flinched.

Indecision froze Optimus in his tracks. He watched Ratchet's throat cabling work, swallowing reflexively. What should he do?

The relief of having his bondmate back vanished under the weight of sudden fear – how could he help when the smallest of movements reminded Ratchet in some small way of what had happened? He felt small, in a way he'd almost forgotten. Powerless. How could he help? He looked out over Ratchet and upon something huge, bigger perhaps than them both.

Cuirasse quietly ushered the med techs away from the berth, sending them and Ironhide out into the monitor room. She approached the berth, but did not come closer than a mechanometer.

"Talk to him, Prime," she urged, crossing her arms across her chassis. "Use the language he's speaking at the moment, keep your voice calm and slow. Don't try to remind him of anything yet – but if the memories come, don't try to stop them, because you likely won't be able to. Just give him something to concentrate on that's in the here and now."

Optimus closed his optics and forced his clouded mind to move. He made to draw his hand away – but Ratchet caught it before it had gone halfway.

"Ratchet?" Optimus asked, layering his field with notes on love and care and the strength of support, as much of it as he dared. "Can you look at me? Do you remember where you are?"

Cyan optics cracked open, glowing with a too-bright intensity. Ratchet stared up at the ceiling, his lips moving faintly, his grip on Optimus' wrist almost painful. Optimus repeated his questions. This time, Ratchet blinked.

Optimus continued, hoping. "You are in the deep scanning room of the Altihexi Autobot Headquarters medical wing, the former Altihex Academy of Medical Engineering. I am with you. Do you remember me?"

Ratchet nodded, licked his lips, a quick furtive motion as if he were afraid of being seen. His vocaliser crackled static for a moment, before he said, "Someone else, here, in this room. I can't remember. Who?"

Optimus glanced at Cuirasse. Ratchet's grip on his wrist tightened, making his plating creak. "She is Cuirasse, a surgeon, the Altihexi Commanding Medical Officer and your second-in-command here. She has a thick Tyrestrin accent."

"It's terrible, isn't it," Ratchet muttered. Finally his optics glanced away from the ceiling, his mind coming back from whichever faraway place it had fled to. "Optimus, I'm tired. My shoulder hurts. Where's it gone?"

"Your joint was damaged beyond repair. The medics detached your arm just below the socket and removed the components. They're going to make you an entirely new shoulder, plating and all." Optimus rotated his wrist, attempting to remind Ratchet of his grip without touching him further, since that had been an ill-advised idea last time.

Ratchet stared at his hand as if he'd never seen it before. He loosened his grip, but didn't quite let go. "Damage reports?"

Optimus relayed his request to Cuirasse. The medic stepped forward, pulling her datapad out of subspace. Ratchet twisted around, keeping her in his line of sight.

"Here," she said, snapping the stylus out of its clip and passing both to Optimus. "First and second surgeons' reports, details of injury, recommended treatment plan as overseen by me. You may keep the datapad for the duration of your stay. I suggest absorbing its contents over several days; you are still recovering from the effects of extended stasis and surgery. Prime can take care of it until you can see straight."

"I can see straight," Ratchet protested, still in Protihexi. Cuirasse glanced at Optimus for the translation, and scoffed when she got it.

"You're five minutes awake after eight joor in stasis, both emergency and medically-enforced. Perhaps I'd believe it if you were a few thousand vorn younger than you are, and even then I'd be hard to convince. You're on the verge of falling into recharge on your own."

"I'm a medic; I know what I'm capable of." Ratchet made as if to pull himself up via his grip on Optimus' arm.

Optimus shifted, pulling back. "Please don't, Ratchet," he said quietly. "You need to rest."

Ratchet stared at him. "Optimus. I can't. It hurts."

The plaintive note in his voice very nearly broke Optimus' spark. "I know it does," he said, cupping Ratchet's hand in his own. The touch made Ratchet's optics shutter. Optimus sighed through his vents. "You need to recharge. When you wake up, your body will hurt less, and you will be able to think clearer."

"Stasis coding's still active," Ratchet said, but let himself relax back against the berth. "Put scrap in my processor. Stay with me, Optimus?"

Optimus smiled, brushing his thumb over Ratchet's knuckles. "I will."


	4. Chapter 4

_got all the pieces to the puzzle but can't seem to make it fit_

_so I'm lost  
tell me where to go_

...

LIKE THE WATER FINDS THE SEA

Optimus spent the rest of the night in an armchair beside Ratchet's berth in the recovery ward. Beside him, Ratchet recharged in peace.

The ward was high up in the old Academy, high enough to make the large windows set into the walls worth it. There was a small crystal garden on the rooftop of a shorter tower between the medical center and the main bulk of the Autobot Headquarters that caught the faint predawn light and cast fantastic patterns onto the facades of the surrounding buildings. Optimus watched the shadows shrink back down into the gaps between buildings as the darkness faded and the glow of dawn stretched its electrum fingers over a cloud-streaked pink sky.

Cuirasse came back near sunrise with the charge nurse in tow. Together they unscrewed the temporary patch over Ratchet's shoulder wound, replacing the nanite gel-soaked mesh patch underneath with a fresh one and checking the formation of new oxide over his flayed protomass. Optimus watched intently though the sight made his tanks churn, unwilling to let Ratchet out of his sight.

"He's doing well," Cuirasse said, lifting Ratchet while the nurse cleaned a seeping patch of internal oils from the berth mesh beneath his shoulder. "I hope we'll be able to release him by the afternoon shift this orn, depending on preliminary psych evaluations."

"So soon?" Optimus asked. He reached out, laid his servo over Ratchet's, stroked the back of his hand though he knew Ratchet couldn't feel it. "It seems rather quick."

Cuirasse made a face. "Yes. Clearing berths, you know how it is. In any case, the wounds which will bother him the most are not ones which we can treat by keeping him in a hospital berth. Once his fluids are up a little more and his power core is full-capacity again, we're going to work on bringing him back into the real world. From then, healing will be mostly up to him. –Medical override key, primary abdominal port," she told the nurse. "Let's have a look at that newspark."

The nurse met Optimus' gaze for a short moment, quietly empathic, before she bent to open the port on Ratchet's side. Cuirasse brought a scanner over from a nearby table. She threaded a pair of plugs into Ratchet's medical ports, and the mechanism, an unassuming thing like a handheld chip computer, beeped twice as they connected.

"This is a very specific sort of deep-systems scanner," Cuirasse explained as the scanner did its job. "Gestational components are some of our oldest and most archaic components. There's a surprising amount of coding in there that isn't derived from – or even related to – very much else in our blueprints at all, which makes looking after carrying mecha an intensive specialisation. Most scanners work via one set of systems – electrical, coding, neural, or mechanical. This one combines all four. This gives us the most accurate scan we can get short of a surgical examination, which at this early stage is out of our reach anyway."

They waited in silence for a few minutes. Optimus curled his fingers around Ratchet's and held tight.

The ward nurse straightened, and left. A transmission encoded in medical frequencies went past. Cuirasse nodded shortly, her frown deepening.

"Alright," she said, resting her chin on her knuckles and scrolling through the readout on the scanner's screen. "The newspark has ignited and settled into orbit around his spark. Ratchet's gestation chamber is expanding ahead of the frame assembly period. The electrical nets in his abdomen are experiencing heightened activity and his coding is activating generative protocols. At this point, I'd say, the newspark has a 96% chance of survival on its own. I will add this information to the treatment plan; doubtless when he wakes up, Ratchet will want as much information as he can get."

She disconnected the scanner from Ratchet's systems and turned the screen to face Optimus. "It's too early to say for sure, but it's looking like the newspark will be hot-spectrae, B-Spectra perhaps."

Optimus, himself a hot-spectrae spark, leant forward, studying the thermal readouts. He bit his glossa until it bled, then spoke with a voice far more steady than it had any right to be: "I confess I know very little about kindling and carrying. What are our options?"

"For now? Not a whole lot. Early-term abortion is exceedingly dangerous; Ratchet would have to pass very stringent mental health examinations if he were to choose that option. While the newspark is attached to his own, while they occupy the same chamber, anything that happens to the newspark is likely to affect him as well. The mortality rate of such procedures is close to 60%."

Optimus' free hand, the one not holding Ratchet's, twinged. He took a deep breath and relaxed it, the overstressed cables releasing gratefully.

"His health and his choice are the two most important things to consider," he said, twining his fingers with Ratchet's. "I won't have his autonomy compromised any further. If he chooses to terminate it, I will support him. If he chooses to keep it, I could do no different."

They hadn't thought about having children for a long time. It had never so much as been discussed; the war had taken up so much of their time that in the rare moments in which they had time enough to be together as partners and lovers rather than Prime and medic, the distant future had been the furthest thing from their minds. The present was all they could afford to worry about, or so Optimus had felt.

Optimus shook his head at his own foolishness. He cupped Ratchet's hand in both of his own and raised it to his mouth, brushing his lips over the knuckles. _I'm sorry,_ he thought.

It hurt, it _hurt_ to think that the chance of that future had been taken away from them. And the idea that Ratchet might spend the next few vorn raising a child born of his rape, _that_ burned like molten steel. Try as he might, Optimus could not see within himself the strength that it might take to assist. There was little pride or selfishness left in him but for where Ratchet was concerned. The old medic was Optimus' solid rock, the core of his world. The small part of him that was still unbridled Orion Pax, young and strong but very much alone, cried out to be allowed this one person to love and cherish and protect. Orion Pax worked very much in ideals: he wanted to share with and share in Ratchet, in this and all things. The idea that he could not share in Ratchet's children was anathema.

The alternative, though, was unthinkable. To leave Ratchet on his own… shame curled through his spark at the very idea.

The vows he had made in bonding to Ratchet echoed through the back of his processor, memory files replaying unbidden. Optimus vented hard. He was afraid to the very core of his spark, _terrified_ that he might not be strong enough, of trying and failing and _letting Ratchet down_— _ what if my best is not good enough, what if I can't be what he needs, what if I hurt him again even as I try to help?_

He stopped, staring wide-opticked at the glyphs in the thoughts. At the pronouns: I. Me. My.

Optimus buried his face in his hands.

If Ratchet chose to terminate the sparkling, Optimus would be whatever support and safetynet he needed. If Ratchet chose to keep it, then he would do his best to be that sparkling's sire regardless.

It was the only thing – and everything – he could do.

If that effort was, or wasn't, enough? _That was not his judgement to make._

Cuirasse watched him with empathy glowing in her field. She was silent until he raised his optics to hers again, wordlessly asking that she continue.

"Likely the course of action most prudent, should he choose it, would be to wait until the newspark separates from his own, between three and four quartexes from now. Late-term abortions are a great deal safer, although not without their own dangers." She put the scanner down. "The time frame concerns me most. The longer he waits, the more his coding invests in the newspark."

On the berth, Ratchet's internal fans whirred quietly. Optimus' sensitive audials picked up faint stuttering noise, a sleepy little sneeze.

He smiled despite himself, clutching tight to Ratchet's hand. Six orns ago he'd woken with their positions reversed, Optimus prone on the big berth in his own suite with Ratchet sitting on the edge, swinging his pedes like a mech a fraction of his age as the rising sun streamed in through the window, as bright and hot as the bond still settling in their sparks. He didn't think they'd let go of each other's servos for the entire morning.

"And if he decides to carry it to term?"

"Adoption is always an option. Not one that I think he is very likely to choose, but with my limited acquaintance to him I can hardly make an informed judgement there." She stood, fiddling for a moment with the IV line. "You should get a little rest before he wakes up, Prime, sir. You're probably going to need it."

* * *

The sun rose.

It took another three joor for Ratchet's vitals to come up to a level which satisfied Cuirasse. Having attempted to follow the medic's advice and failed on several counts, Optimus passed the time doing what little work he could manage from the chair beside his bondmate's berth. This was slow going; he couldn't concentrate for much more than a few breem at a time.

(If he had been able to, he might have noticed that the amount of paperwork being sent to his inbox was considerably less than usual. Prowl sent his regard in nonverbal ways.)

He was beginning to feel the exhaustion of the past orn in every reach of his systems. His optics kept closing halfway, his damper systems shutting down to preserve energy. He nursed a cube of midgrade smuggled into the ward by an uncharacteristically apologetic Mirage, who possessed a healthy respect for the medical staff only surpassed by his regard for the health and wellbeing of his Prime. The energon kept the darkness from the edges of his visual field, but it would only be a stopgap measure. Sooner or later, he'd have to shut down for real, or else risk dropping into stasis where he sat.

When Cuirasse next came back, flanked by First Aid and a little orange minibot whom she introduced as Rung, he drained the last of the cube and set down his datapad. Work was suddenly the last thing on his priority queue.

Rung walked around the berth and took up a place beside Optimus' chair as the two medics removed the monitoring equipment. For a moment Optimus found himself staring: the little mech's optical array was almost entirely obscured by a beaky mask, his optics glowing huge and wide beneath a pair of thick scholarly goggles. He held out a friendly servo in an unmistakeably upper-class greeting. Optimus' returning grip swallowed both servo and stick-thin wrist.

"I am Rung," he said, sharp Iaconian words articulated with a velvety Petrexi accent. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Optimus Prime, although not under such circumstances. How are you feeling?"

His field was calm and still, and he was _old_ beneath it, perhaps one of the oldest mecha Optimus had ever met. He glanced back to Ratchet, and made the split-second decision to trust Rung.

"I feel tired," he said. It came out with a heartfelt flicker of his field. "Large parts of me keep hoping that it is just a particularly cruel recharge flux, and that if I fall asleep I will wake up in the morning with Ratchet beside me and that life will continue on as usual. It is the same part of me that hopes the war can be ended tomorrow with no further loss of life, however, and I find that conjunction irrationally angering."

There was a groan from the berth as Ratchet shook off the last of the stasis codes. His optics flickered online, and almost immediately he sought out Optimus.

Unlike the previous night there was little confusion, and no hesitation. He was pushing himself upright as soon as he had movement in his limbs, pain rippling through his field as he stopped barely long enough to look down at himself.

"Ratchet," Optimus said, offering his servo. It was caught in a death grip, borne to the medical berth as Ratchet doubled over, wrapping his field close around his frame. He opened his mouth, closed it again, shuttered his optics and exvented hard.

He hadn't yet been repainted, and suddenly Optimus wished they'd done it first. The foreign paint transfers had been scrubbed away, but Ratchet's own coat still bore several deep scratches, right down to the metal. He looked away from Ratchet for a microsecond, composing a silent databurst to Cuirasse.

Ratchet chose that moment to find his voice.

"I'm sorry," he croaked, in Protihexi, his servo tightening around Optimus'. "You were right – I never should have taken that mission, I'm sorry." He repeated it, "I'm sorry," over and over again until his vocaliser lapsed into silence.

Optimus stared dumbly, physically unable to foment a response for so long that Ratchet's grip on his servo loosened, hesitant.

"It's not your fault," Optimus made his vocaliser work by pure force of will, cupping both hands around Ratchet's. "You have nothing to apologise for—not to me, nor to anyone."

Ratchet stared down at their hands, his dente bared in an anguished half-snarl. "You were right, and I'm sorry I didn't _listen_ to you— I just, I wanted to _help_ and I thought I could do it but I couldn't run fast enough and Cutlass died because of me." His vents juddered, a choked sob. "I thought I was going to die as well, and you with me – they just, they _killed_ him and they came after me and I couldn't think, I just _did_ and I thought if I could just stay alive then someone would find me. Anything was worth that, I thought, Optimus. I'm so sorry."

"There is nothing to apologise for," Optimus repeated, numb. "You're alive, and that's what matters the most. To me, and to everyone here." Had he really heard that right? Had Ratchet just implied that violent rape had been a bargain, a price he'd willingly paid for survival? _Primus below_. He opened his end of the bond as far as it would go and reached through with love and hope and strength, offering himself. Ratchet clung to him with starving thoughts, the brilliant reaches of his mind desolate. Used-up, Ratchet thought.

/ _You are not used_ / Optimus thought, as hard as he dared. / _You have been beaten and attacked and invaded in the most cruel of ways, but you are not _used._ You survived. You did what you could, and I love you so much. _/

Ratchet's vocaliser crackled. / _I'm sorry._ / The bond echoed with residual pain, sharp and tearing. / _I still feel like I'm going to die. It hurts, in my spark._ /

The sparkling. Optimus tamped down a fresh wellspring of grief before Ratchet could feel it. Conceived from rape. He hurt – for Ratchet, for himself, and for the little newspark too. Black ice encased his spark.

/ _Ratchet_ / he said, fighting it off, /_ there is something you need to know. You're carrying._ /

Ratchet looked straight at him for the first time since he'd woken up. Cyan optics widened impossibly. / _I—what? When? Did we kindle?_ / His field whirled, nebulous and unreadable.

Optimus shook his helm. / _We didn't. It's not— I'm not the sire._ /

"Impossible," Ratchet said out loud. "My core locks, my spark, they never touched that. It must be ours."

Optimus looked to Cuirasse for help, but the doctors had retreated, giving them a moment of privacy. "It's not; it's too young."

"_How_ young?" Ratchet all but snarled. He felt like he was on the verge of panic, all fizzing energy and sharp-edged fear. Optimus bent down, fished the datapad containing his medical records out from where he'd put it underneath his chair last night. Ratchet snatched it from Optimus' servos, turned it on, and found he had no free hand with which to scroll. He glanced at his missing shoulder and the microplates of his face drew tight in remembered agony.

Optimus took the pad from his nerveless hand. "Cuirasse believes it is less than an orn old." He found the relevant section and passed it back. Ratchet took it silently, scanning the text with feverish optics. "She has also speculated that it was budded rather than kindled. I apologise, the details have escaped me."

Ratchet braced the pad against his knee and scrolled downwards. "It's impossible, the odds are more than a million to one." He looked up, and his optics met Optimus', wide and horrified. "I overloaded. They—they did that to me and I came so many times. I can't – help me, Optimus; I don't know what to do!"

Optimus reached out with arms and thoughts, unthinking. Ratchet's spark reached back, but his body hesitated. A second: one, two. Their servos met. A moment later, their optics. Ratchet's lips parted, the beginning of a question on the tip of his glossa.

_Can I?_

Optimus nodded.

His chair rocked back on two legs, his arms suddenly full of his bondmate. Ratchet gave a choked cry of pain and latched on with servo so tight it scraped curls of paint from Optimus' back and shoulders. Their sparks throbbed in twain, the closeness a relief so intense it hurt after orns of separation.

He wrapped his arms around Ratchet, holding fast, secure but not overly tight. The chemical smell of the nangel patch filled the air, so much it stank. The morning sunlight gleamed against Ratchet's white and orange plating.

Wretched sobs, one after the other. Ratchet's vents shrilled, overworked. He buried his face in the curve of Optimus' neck between clavicular strut and shoulder armor, gasping through his mouth.

/_ What can I do?_ / he asked through comms, his mental voice halting and miserable. /_ I'm sorry._ /

Optimus rested his chin against the crown of Ratchet's helm. / _As I said before, there is nothing here you need to apologise for. It is not your fault this happened._ /

Ratchet wailed. /_ But I said they could! I was so afraid that they were going to kill me that I gave them the idea and I sat down and I spread my legs for them and— and I felt them come inside me and I _overloaded,_ Optimus!_ / He spat the words like weapons, throwing them at Optimus even as he clawed at Optimus' back and pressed himself so close it seemed he was trying to worm beneath Optimus' plating. / _I as good as asked for it! I was thinking of you the whole time. I didn't want to die._ /

/_ Very few people truly do_ / Optimus replied, stroking one hand over the small of Ratchet's back. Ratchet shuddered, heaving in a deep breath. / _Ratchet, the only person who needs to forgive you is yourself. However, if you cannot do that at this moment in time – that is okay. Neither do you need to know what to do with yourself right now. You are still severely injured and in shock. Your arm will be repaired, but the rest will take far longer. You don't have to make up your mind on anything right now. And I want you to know that I am, and always will be, here for you._ /

Ratchet was silent for a long while. His ventilations slowed, the frenzied whining of his internal fans dying down. When he eventually spoke, it was with a quiet question.

"Where's that datapad?"

Optimus scanned the bay, craning his neck to see over Ratchet's shoulder. "On the floor behind you. Shall I get it?"

Ratchet gave a minute shake of his helm. "No. Just— let me stay for a bit."

"For as long as you like." Optimus leant against the padded back of the chair, settling Ratchet's weight against his chassis. "You and I have both been relieved of our duties for the remainder of the quartex. Cuirasse and First Aid hope to discharge you by this afternoon, but there is no need to hurry."

Ratchet made a little raspy cough. It took Optimus a moment to realise it had been intended as a wry laugh.

He looked down at Ratchet, taking in the tired twist of his field. The rush of sudden emotion had drained away and now it left them both on the verge of shutdown. Black spots danced in and out of focus at the edges of his vision, details pixelating on his HUD.

"I'm going to keep the newspark," Ratchet mumbled into Optimus' neck. "I— I understand if you don't want anything to do with it, but I'm going to keep it."

"You don't have to decide yet," Optimus said, as neutrally as he could manage. Primus. Could he do it? Take care of a child, or Ratchet's child? Even knowing the circumstances which had given it life?

"Well, I have," Ratchet said shortly. "Don't try to talk me out of it—please."

_Why?_ Optimus wanted to ask, so very badly. He tried to pretend for a moment that he didn't know the answer, that the sympathy wending through his spark was for Ratchet and Ratchet alone. It was that sympathy for which Primus had found him worthy of the Primacy, the Matrix. The Creator's regard pressed down upon him, support and responsibility in one.

He tightened his arms around Ratchet's frame, kissing the crown of his helm.

"I won't," he said. "And I won't make you do this alone. Never, never."

His only answer was a whispered, "Thank you."


End file.
